Come Home
by Phoenixflames12
Summary: 'Barely a twelvemonth/after the seven days war that put the world to sleep' - Edwin Muir 'The Horses' Post-apocolypse/WW1/WW2 AU Please feel free to read and review! Much love and enjoy x (Oneshot)


_**A/N: 'Barely a twelvemonth after/ the seven days war that put the world to sleep' Edwin Muir- The Horses**_

 _ **Oneshot**_

 ** _Disclaimer: As I am not male, French or living in C19th Paris, how can I possibly own Les Miserables? I am simply trying to convey my love for Les Amis de l'ABC into something cohesive- please don't sue me!_**

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Come Home

The waiting is always the worst.

The waiting, the desire to be still and yet the inability to do anything but move as his eyes dart every now and again to the clock; hands clamped firmly within his pockets.

He can still feel their tremors, the sweat clinging to the fabric of his trousers, the dryness caught in the pit of his throat.

He cannot bear it.

Deep down, he knows that he is being irrational, knows that they will come back; that all of them have passed their training, have excelled in all and every test that the organisation has thrown at them and yet… And yet, still he sees them as raw recruits, still he sees them as frightened boys with huge eyes and bodies too small for the skins that they have had to step into. Still he sees himself as he once was; no more than ten years ago now, reflected in each and every one of their faces.

Lost.

Frightened.

Angry.

The clock ticks on.

Outside the sky is beginning to darken, the sun slowly sinking into a final curtsey beneath a curtain of smoked indigo sky, the clouds heavy with the threat of oncoming rain.

He hopes with all his heart that it does not come to that.

Hopes for their sake, as much as his own; because none of them have flown in adverse weather conditions, none of them have felt the steady rise of panic as the steady, demented wail of the rain hammering against the ship begins its' chorus.

Hopes that their visibility will remain clear, that soon; very soon, he will hear the familiar tramp of boots against the tarmac, that the door to the recruit's mess will be thrust open in a blast of heat and noise and song…

'Sir?' The weight of a hand on his shoulder sends a shiver down his spine as he turns, to see the darkly lined face of his second-in-command watching him; grey-blue eyes alight with concern.

'Sir…'

The weight of a cigarette being pressed into his hands feels oddly comforting as he watches the ice blue eyes of the man beside him search his face; concern etched in every ivory pore of his being.

'Thank you', he hears himself saying, thinking of those poor boys thrust high up in the winter sky and silently curses their commanders for even thinking that today, tonight of all nights would be a preferable night for the recruits' first mission.

In the shadows of the room behind him, the radio crackles and somehow, he isn't sure how; the familiar sound of the aerial trying to wind itself into life makes him think of home, back in deepest Devon. Makes him think of home and crowding into the sitting room with his parents and sisters to listen to the evening news, before all of this began, before the radios failed and the warships slowly slipping overland became as familiar a sight as the postman on his bicycle.

How long ago that seemed now!

It felt like a lifetime and yet he had received a letter from Isabelle, who was now working as a VAD in a war hospital in the capital only a week ago, begging him to write to Mother.

Isabelle who had signed herself up at the local hospital as soon as the war had been declared; a war that wasn't really a war at all, but the fear of a war; a war with an enemy that refused to be seen, an enemy that hid behind the screaming headlines of the newspaper, hid behind the exhausted pause of the news reader that preceded the undercover news bulletin that had sprung up from the depths of a population desperate for news of the outside world.

'Sir, if I may…' His eyes drift back to the clock, his ears full of the tedium of time, acutely aware that he is being watched and at the same time is watching himself.

 _Where are they?_

'Sir…'

The weight of the still unsmoked cigarette feels alien between his fingers as he hears a door slam shut and the hurried tramp of footsteps approaching the office door.

A door bangs open.

An orderly stands, waiting for admittance, a bundle of neatly filed papers that are tied with fading string waiting for his approval.

'Any news?'

Hazelnut brown eyes that are flecked with green and gold look up, curiosity sparkling through the same careworn expression worn by every member of the office.

'No, sir', the man says at last.

'Nothing?' He can't keep the bite from the question, his eyes glancing yet again to the clock.

 _Oh God, why did it have to take so long?_

'No sir, there's been so communication since take off this morning. I…' The orderly trails off, unable to meet his gaze.

 _No communication since this morning._

Each word seems to hit him at a different speed, the pain all the more agonising for that.

 _No communication since this morning._

But… But that wasn't possible.

Was it?

Rationally, he knows it is; that there a myriad of different scenarios that they could have found themselves in; but still, deep down, he had hoped, had thought that today would be different, that today would not end as all the other days in this fog filled war had ended, with the uncertainty of lost comrades, of the growing terror of the enemy and what could be planned behind their lines.

'You will need to write to their families, Sir'.

He hardly hears it.

He doesn't want to hear it.

They had been boys.

Boys of nineteen, some in their twenties, boys who had seen so little and yet now were expected to die for a world that they had not seen, that they had not had the chance to see and now were too young to know the real cost of their sacrifice; too full of blazing hope for the future of their broken country.

It feels jarring to think of them belonging to the realms of the past tense.

Jarring because he had met with them on the airstrip not nine hours ago, had shook their hands and tried to comfort the frightened ones. Had drunk up their bravery, their reckless, fool-hearty courage until they were all drunk; swaying on the promise of success.

And now…

Where were they?

That was the worst of it.

They could be anywhere, lying in a tattered heap of blackened rubble in a turnip field across the channel, sunk within the inky waters of the seine, stumbling forward with a bayonet at their back as the newest prisoners of this silent, wasteful war, born from the brains of men who would never fight, simply push their pieces across a board and wait as far off lives were snapped cleanly short.

'Leave a light in the window', he says, at last, finally dragging his eyes from the clock, the words scraping across his tongue.

The weight of the last few hours seems to pull on him as he reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a box of matches, his fingers brushing against the cold metal of a long forgotten photo frame, the body of a leaking fountain pen, a sheaf of notes that he had no use for now.

He cannot stop his hands from trembling as the match is struck, the lamp hissing and spitting as it gutters into life.

'Come home', he hears himself mouthing to the silent city that is slowly sinking into sleep outside the office window.

'Come home'.

 _ **Fin**_

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 _ **A/N: Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticism etc are like chocolate to my brain!**_

 _ **Much love and enjoy x**_


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